The Price Of Silence. Kate Wilhelm

Rawleigh. Thanks for the prescription. It was exactly right.”

      “Please,” he said. “Just Sam. The little kids call me Dr. Rawleigh because their moms make them, then it turns into Dr. Sam, and before you know it, just plain old Sam. We’re all on first names here, even us outsiders.”

      “You’re an outsider?”

      “Going on twenty-one years now. Came, married a local girl, stayed, but I’m an outsider. An observer. You get used to it.”

      Although Johnny looked a little uncomfortable, he did not dispute the doctor’s words. He shrugged and waved to the waitress for the check, and Todd left them at the table, bemused. So far everyone had treated her exactly the way she would have expected, kindly, with friendliness, without a trace of suspicion or distrust.

      That night she called Barney and told him about her day and he told her about his, then said huskily, “The movers will come on Tuesday, and the minute they’re out the door, so am I.”

      Just as huskily she said, “Good. Then I will try to be patient and not run away with the handsome doctor.”

      When she hung up, she closed her eyes tight and drew in a long breath. She had never been so lonesome in her life.

      Four

      “And on your left, is the one and only Coombs greenhouse where at this very moment an acre of tomatoes is getting sunburned, or sun dried, or something. The Coombs girls are both in their sixties.” Todd was the tour guide, pointing out the must-see sights to Barney as they strolled. They had been there a month, but this was the first weekend free of settling-in chores. “I have to take pictures at their mother’s funeral, at least at the cemetery, on Monday. Half the county will be there, according to Ruth Ann.” Sobering, she said. “Ruth Ann wrote a very touching obituary. She’s really a fine writer. Anyway, coming up on the right is Miss Lizzy’s gift shop, where you will find plates with the map of Oregon, Chief Joseph’s last stand, some of the loveliest carved or sculpted birds I’ve ever seen, a rendition of the Oregon Trail on bark—” She frowned at Barney, who had started to laugh.

      “Sir, this is a serious business.”

      “You’re babbling.”

      “I know. You have to remember that as one of four children, and just a girl, no one ever paid any attention to anything I said, so I stopped saying much of anything until I found you—Oh, look. There’s Sam’s Explorer. He’s going into the rock shop. Come on, you can meet him. The owner is Jacko. No last name. Just Jacko.” She hurried him along.

      During the past month, she had made it a point to enter every business establishment in town and introduce herself. Her cause, she had explained to Barney, was to be known so that if anything happened, someone would think to tell her. Also, she had said, Shinny, their star reporter, didn’t know the difference between a grocery list and a news story. So far the most compelling bit of news he had reported had been the town-council meeting; they were debating where on the highway to put a traffic light. North end of town, or at Crest Loop? The debate, she had added, had been raging for two years.

      Jacko’s shop was a single room with aisles barely wide enough to maneuver in, crowded on both sides by bins of rocks, baskets of rocks, a long counter so cluttered with rocks there was never enough space to fill out a receipt, a showcase filled with cut and polished rocks, and another one with rocks that had been carved, inset into wooden frames, rested on black pedestals, or simply tumbled about. An agate-framed clock said nine fifteen, and always said nine fifteen, but its snowflake agate was beautiful. It was dark blue with white flecks that looked adrift throughout. In the rear of the shop was a workbench crowded with lapidary equipment.

      When Todd and Barney entered the shop, Sam was leaning on the counter, where he and Jacko were examining something. Both men looked up.

      “Hi,” Todd said. “This is Barney. My husband.” After the introductions, they all looked at a geode on the counter. The hollow rock was as big as a grapefruit, and had been cut into two pieces.

      “I never saw one that big,” Todd said. “It’s awesome.” It was neatly halved, the cavity filled with glittering crystals of quartz streaked with pale blue. She looked at Jacko. “Is it for sale?”

      “Ask him,” Jacko said, jerking his thumb at Sam. “He found it and sawed it open. He brings in stuff like that to rile me.” Jacko was short, no more than five feet five, and his head was totally bald, but he had a great beard with enough hair that if it had been amply divided between his pate and his chin there would have been hair left over.

      Barney was examining the geode. “Wow, that is a beauty. How did you manage to saw it like that?”

      Two big crystals had been split almost exactly in half, and the cut edges smoothed and polished to a mirror finish.

      “Just luck,” Sam said. “No way of knowing what you’re going to find until you open one of them, and I happened to hit it right. I thought I’d have them made into bookends, juniper wood, curved like a wave breaking with these set in. If Thomas Bird will carve the stands, they’ll make a pretty pair.”

      “A fantastic pair,” Barney said. “Where did you find it?”

      Jacko snorted and Sam grinned, then said, “Does a fisherman tell where he caught the fifteen-pound trout? Out there.” He waved his hand generally toward the vast desert.

      “You have equipment to cut rocks and polish them, all that?” Todd asked.

      Jacko made his peculiar snort of laughter again. “He’s got stuff that makes mine look like a kid’s first tool kit.” He motioned to Todd to follow and started to move away, saying, “He had to build a special room to house his equipment. Look, I got some new crystals in last week.”

      While she looked at the new crystals, Barney and Sam chatted about the desert and rock hounds. “It gets in the blood,” Sam said. “You always think that next time you’ll find something even better, or you find a streak and have to force yourself to leave it, hoping no one else will come along before you get back to it. Come up to the house sometime, let me show you my collection.”

      Todd shook her head at Jacko. “I’m waiting for a clearance sale.” Turning to Sam she said, “We took that hike last weekend, up to the start of the creek. It’s beautiful up there. Thanks for telling me about it.” She glanced at her watch. “We should be going,” she said to Barney. They were on their way for a cookout with Jan and Seth MacMichaels.

      Outside again, heading toward the manufactured houses where Jan and Seth lived, she said, “Chief Ollie Briscoe began calling Seth Sonny, and now almost everyone does, and he hates it. So don’t call him Sonny.”

      “I wouldn’t have thought of it until you told me not to. Now, I don’t know. What if it pops out?”

      “Ollie also said he’s a loaded gun looking for someone to shoot. So watch it. That’s all I can say.”

      They both laughed. Jan worked at Safeway and Seth was fulfilling a two-year contract as a police officer in Brindle, his first job after finishing police academy. Eventually he wanted to work as a investigator for the state police, she told Barney, but he was too young and green, and with the budget cuts they had endured, the department wasn’t hiring anyway.

      It was unfortunate, Todd thought a few minutes later, but Seth did look like someone who should be called Sonny. He was tall and broad, built like a football player, a high-school varsity player, with a lot of reddish-blond hair, a big open face, and candid blue eyes. He was sunburned, as if he never really tanned, but burned again and again. His nose was peeling. Jan was dimply and cute with masses of dark curly hair, heavy eye makeup, and a Barbie-doll figure.

      They were seated under an awning at the rear of the house that was radiating heat, as was the concrete slab of a deck. “Bake in the summer, freeze in the winter,” Jan said. “I can’t tell you how jealous I was when I heard you got a real house. It wasn’t available when we were looking.” She took a long drink of